Fall 2011 banding: week 2

Another very quiet week, with not many migrants around. A higher percentage of the young resident birds that I'm banding have not yet started or are just beginning their post-juvenile molt than I usually see this time of year. This is the replacement of their juvenile plumage into their first winter adult plumage. It's usually in full swing right now. Same with the molt of adults, who typically molt all of their feathers after they are done nesting. The adults I've banded have just started this process.

The extent of this molt this year tells me that these species -- cardinals, catbirds, robins, and Song Sparrows mostly -- were a little later in fledging than usual. It could be that the big flood in May caused some birds to lose their first nest, and pushed breeding back a couple weeks. Or, good conditions this summer (warm, good amount of rainfall, lots of bugs) could mean some species attempted a third nesting.

I have heard and seen adult birds still tending their newly-fledged young. Here is a brand-new youngster I captured this week. Can you guess the species?

While it seems a little lost and forlorn, I found one of the parents in a nearby net. Although both sexes of this species look alike, they can sometimes be distinguished in the hand. The incubating parent (in most songbirds, just the female) develops a bare area on her belly called a brood patch. The area loses feathering and becomes vascularized in order to facilitate the transfer of heat from her body to the eggs and chicks. I was able to tell that this was the female parent of the chick above.

It's a Chipping Sparrow, a common nester here on campus.

Another frequent nester is the Baltimore Oriole. Because they migrate so early in the season, I sometimes don't catch any in the fall. I had three in one net this week, including this adult male. Orioles are pretty sassy. This one seemed astonished, and a little indignant.

Over the weekend, we had some north winds which brought in some migrants that were observed on our survey on Sunday. This week may bring a small uptick in captures if the migrants stick around, but the forecast is for more southerly winds and hot temperatures toward the end of the week. That could slow things down, but we'll see!

Fall banding 2011 begins

RRBO began the 2011 fall banding season on 12 August. The first week was a "soft" opening, when we put up only a portion of the nets each day, make adjustments, and handle all the young fledglings in the area with some extra TLC. We were also taking some extra time to prepare for a special project, which I'll write about in a future post.

Not too many migrants were present. We caught a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher on 15 August, which was an early date for a fall migrant in Dearborn. A Chestnut-sided Warbler captured on 17 August was the only other passage migrant netted this period. I like the inquisitive look it has.


What we did have was a lot of mosquitoes. This is the worst year for mosquitoes I can remember. In fact, so many come inside with me that they are as bad inside the banding room as many typical years outside.

The coolest bird we caught was not uncommon -- a male Northern Cardinal. But it was a bird we had banded on 19 April 2001 as a second-year bird. Thus, he is now over 11 years old, the oldest cardinal we have recaptured and the second oldest bird we have ever recaptured. While 11 years falls short of the record listed at the Bird Banding Lab web site of over 15 years, it was still good to see him. Over the years he has been recaptured 21 times, but the last time was in 2009.

This is our fifth year of studying the diets of fall migrant birds on campus. We're off to a good start with our sampling of seeds in the poop of various birds. These are all from robins and catbirds.

Just about every species of fruit that is currently ripe has showed up in the samples: grape, pokeweed, glossy buckthorn, dogwood, cherry, and nightshade.

Speaking of robins, three of the six robins we've caught so far have weighed less than 60 grams and have been fairly emaciated. By comparison, only six robins out of over 3500 previously banded here have weighed less than 60 grams, and the average weight for robins is about 78 grams. Generally, I only see birds like this when they are on death's door, and often after they have been exposed to lawn chemicals. I don't have an explanation for the lean condition of these birds, but we'll be monitoring future captures carefully.

Finally, it looks like it may be a very good year, the first in some time, for chickadees. Over the decade between 1992-2002, the resident chickadee population on campus was on the decline. Last fall, there was a large movement of chickadees in eastern North America. It was notable here, and I wrote about it after our last Winter Bird Population Survey season. Clearly, many chickadees chose to stay and nest here, as they were evident on our spring survey as well. We've already banded nine, which is our average over the past nine years. Our high was 52 in 2002. As you might imagine, they are quite the little fussbudgets. I'm happy that their numbers are rebounding, but not so sure I want to band a record number of them.

A Black-capped Chickadee was the first bird banded by RRBO during our inaugural fall season in August 1992. That's right -- this is RRBO's 20th fall banding season. Stay tuned for anniversary-year news.

Dearborn Goldfinch in Ontario

RRBO recently received notice that one of the 2500+ American Goldfinches banded here on campus was recovered elsewhere. Only about 1% of small songbirds banded are found away from the place they were banded, so a report of this kind is always interesting. Usually, birds are not found far away, and usually they are dead. This report indicated that the goldfinch in question, a hatching-year male we banded here on 19 October 2010, was captured and released by another bander north of Guelph, Ontario (about 175 miles from Dearborn, as the goldfinch flies) on 10 May 2011.This has happened only a few times for RRBO: a Yellow-rumped Warbler caught in Tallahassee, FL, a White-throated Sparrow on Ontario's Bruce Peninsula, and a Northern Waterthrush in Wisconsin. What made this American Goldfinch capture even more special was that it was captured by Antonio Salvadori.

Toni has been banding for nearly as long as I have been alive, founded the Guelph Banders Group, and bands at three locations. One is at his home in Guelph; another a property in Ermosa, just outside of Guelph; and at Colwyn Farm, northeast of Guelph near the town of Fergus. But here's the kicker. In 2008, Toni captured and released a Blue Jay banded in the east Dearborn yard of RRBO's Julie Craves and Darrin O'Brien. He caught the jay at his Ermosa, Ontario location. It's hard to imagine the odds of this occurring. I might expect that Black Swamp Bird Observatory would capture some of our birds, or vice versa, given their volume and location on the north shore of Lake Erie about 50 miles nearly due south of RRBO. So far, this hasn't happened. You can read more about other out-of-state recoveries of RRBO's birds on our recoveries page, and about Toni's banding history in this PDF from the Guelph Field Naturalists newsletter. Cross posted at the RRBO web site.

Spring migration 2011

The spring 2011 survey season took place 1 April through 15 June. On campus, regular surveys were conducted on on 50 of the 70 days, with nearly daily surveys between 20 April and 3 June. The surveys recorded 146 species (another 15 were recorded in Dearborn off-campus). This is greater than the previous ten-year average of 130 species, or the five-year average of 133. The peak day was 10 May with 95 species, of which 25 species were warblers. Typically, our peak day is around 80 species and occurs later in the month (May 16-20 the past three years).

Weather
Spring 2011 was the second wettest spring on record for Detroit, according to the National Weather Service. April was generally cool, with measurable precipitation 18 out of 30 days and a rainfall total 2.5 inches above normal. May featured normal temperatures, and 21 days of precipitation. This included a dramatic soaker on May 25-26 with over 2.5 inches of rain on campus that caused the Rouge River to peak at least five feet above flood stage (upper left in photo is the waterfall at Fair Lane Estate, inundated by the high water). The month ended up being the second wettest May on record.

Highlights
Thirty species of warblers were recorded on campus this spring. This includes all 26 regularly-occurring species (at least 8 of the last 10 years), as well as the less-common species Pine Warbler (26 Apr), Prothonotary Warbler (9 to 11 May), Kentucky Warbler (10 May), and Hooded Warbler (18 and 22 May).

In general, migration was excellent this year, which has not been the case for the past five years or so. In addition to great diversity, numbers were also better. Early season migrants were especially abundant. The two eBird graphs below show two of these species, Yellow-rumped Warbler and Palm Warbler for the last five spring migrations. Lines represent the highest count of a species submitted on a single checklist from the UM-Dearborn campus during the weekly periods indicated. They show peak numbers in 2011 were much higher than in recent years (click to enlarge).




A variety of things could factor into these increased numbers, but a couple stand out, especially for the high numbers of early migrants. First, this was a La Niña year. While La Niña/El Niño cycles do not have a strong impact on our weather here in the upper Midwest (which is more influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation), it does have a strong impact on weather where many of "our" birds winter. Namely, it was a very wet winter in much of Latin America. Wetter winters tend to have higher insect abundance, which translates into better overwinter survival for some species of birds. Thus, some species may have been more abundant this year.

Another factor could be detectability. The overall cool weather, without early hot spells, slowed leaf-out on woody plants. When trees don't have leaves, birds are simply easier to see and count. The graph below shows the accumulated growing degree days (GDD) for the period of 15 March, when woody plants here often begin to awaken, and 10 May, when we would expect many migrant bird species to be present. GDD are a measure of heat accumulation based on daily temperatures that are often used in agriculture to determine, for example, when crop species are likely to mature (data from Detroit Metro airport, click to enlarge).

As you can see, by our peak day of 10 May, the accumulated GDDs were the lower than they had been for years, which was reflected in the slow leaf-out of the trees here on campus.
Other notable birds this spring included Osprey on 10 and 23 May; five records of Bald Eagle, of which three were on campus; five records of flyover Sandhill Cranes, all from campus (there have only been 10 records in the past 10 years!); and the spate of Bobolink sightings around Dearborn between 6 and 9 May which included ten singing males in the fields at Hubbard and Southfield on 8 May.

Arrival dates
Only two species arrived earlier than any previous record for Dearborn. They were Ruby-throated Hummingbird on 26 Apr (4 days earlier) and Indigo Bunting (27 Apr off-campus, 1 day earlier). A Blackburnian Warbler on 27 Apr tied the previous early arrival date. Two Common Loons seen over east Dearborn on 20 Mar were also early, but occasionally this species winters in the Great Lakes.

Extremes are interesting, but deviation from a more typical arrival date is probably a more accurate depiction of any shift in migratory phenology. I have 14 to 21 years of spring arrival dates for 43 species. There are a number of ways to calculate central tendency (or the "expected" middle value of a data set). For simplicity's sake in this example, I calculated the arithmetic mean, or average arrival date for each species to compare to this year's arrival dates. For these 43 species:

• Fourteen (32%) arrived on their average arrival date.


• Seven (16%) arrived later than average (the average for those species only was 3 days later)


• Twenty-two (51%) arrived earlier than their average arrival date (for those species, the average was 4 days earlier).


• For all 43 species, arrival time averaged 1.6 days earlier than "usual."

All spring data from 1994 through 2011 is now in eBird. You can explore all of the survey data input for the campus at eBird. Use the "Change date" button at the top of that page to look at separate years or to compare years.

Many thanks to Darrin O'Brien and Mike O'Leary, who assisted with surveys this spring.

NAMC 2011 - Dearborn portion

Saturday, May 14 was the North American Migration Count. My husband Darrin O'Brien coordinates the count for Wayne County, and as usual we covered the UM-Dearborn campus, as well as some other spots in Dearborn. It was a pretty lousy day weather-wise, and many of the migrants that we enjoyed last week had moved on. Although we were only able to thoroughly cover campus and one of the Ford fields (with quick peeks at a few other locations) we still managed to have a pretty good day. On campus we tallied 83 species, including 19 species of warblers. None of the warblers were recorded in numbers over 10 individuals, but we had great looks at Mourning Warblers which is always a treat. Most of the warblers were feeding rather high in oak trees, typical of mid-migration as they are among the last trees to leaf out. Other highlights included a flyover Broad-winged Hawk, and the first Gray-cheeked Thrush of the season. We spent more time than we budgeted at the Ford field in the southeast corner of Hubbard and Southfield. We ended up with 48 species there, including 13 warblers species feeding in the oaks along the margins. This field, along with several others, has been planted in a cover crop of clover. While the Bobolinks present there earlier this month have moved on, there were many Savannah Sparrows on territory or with nests, along with Ring-necked Pheasant, Eastern Towhee, and some lingering White-crowned Sparrows. One of the better birds of the day was a calling Eastern Meadowlark in field #8. This is no longer an easy bird to find in Dearborn. Please note that these fields are now posted "no trespassing" so should only be viewed from public roads. RRBO has permission from Ford security to survey them. One last surprise was a big roost of Double-crested Cormorants (above) at Fordson Island. Between the birds perched on the dead tree and the ones flying around the Ford Rouge Plant, we counted 102. Back at home in east Dearborn, we had one of the Pine Siskins nesting in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, we did not have the time to walk along the Rouge River channel, or hit a couple of other birdy spots. Overall, we had 98 species (23 warbler species) in Dearborn for the day.

Spring migration update

Spring migration has been terrific the last week, so I hope everyone has had a chance to get out and see some birds. I thought I would provide a more detailed update here.

The chart below shows the number of species seen on campus each day since 2 May (the yellow line) as well as the number of warblers species (the blue bars). Click to enlarge.

The best day of the season was 10 May, with 95 species recorded, 25 of which were warblers. For some perspective, there are 37 species of warblers that occur regularly in Michigan (4 more are considered accidental; we have recorded all but 2 of the 41 species in Dearborn in the last 40 years). Some of the warbler highlights were a Kentucky Warbler on 10 May, our first record since 2006 of this southern species, and a female Prothonotary Warbler, which was present from 9-11 May. A gorgeous Golden-winged Warbler was also seen from 10-12 May. Closely related Blue-winged Warblers have also been present, while on 8-9 May, a hybrid of the two, a "Brewster's" Warbler, was observed; it sang a Blue-winged song. The total number of warbler species for 2011 so far is 28.

Other bird highlights of this period include a Summer Tanager and an Osprey on 10 May; a fairly early Olive-sided Flycatcher on 12 May, and two Red-headed Woodpeckers on 13 May.

We have recorded 133 species on campus so far in 2011. The total for Dearborn for the year is 151. This includes two records of Clay-colored Sparrow. One was this bird, photographed by Cathy Carroll along the Rouge River near the TPC of Michigan on 10 May.

Another was singing at the fallow sunflower field at the south side of Hubbard at Southfield. That location also hosted up to 10 male Bobolinks from 6-8 May.

I think migration has been terrific due to a combination of things. First, we did not get the very early warm spells that we have had the last couple of years, so trees and shrubs did not leaf out early. This has made viewing conditions quite excellent. Cool mornings have concentrated birds in sunny spots in the morning, and also resulted in many insects being most abundant near the water's edge (on campus, along Fairlane Lake). Thus, birds have been easier to find. Some credit has to be given to the luck of weather patterns, which are always the wild card. Finally, I think we are recovering from population losses that were due to the dramatic cold spell in the eastern U.S. in spring 2007.

There is a lull right now, but I expect we will get one more good wave of migrants before the end of the month. Viewing conditions will be more challenging now that foliage is thicker, but do your best to get out and enjoy!

Update on the Ross's Goose

In my last post, I described the discovery of a Ross's Goose on 24 March 2011, a first record for Dearborn. The goose was banded, and we have just received the details from the Bird Banding Lab.

This was a nestling male banded on 7 August 2006 in Nunavut. This much I knew from reporting the goose on the Bird Banding Lab's web site. The location, it turns out, is McTavish Point. The geocoordinates are 67.75, -101.08333, which places it north of the Arctic Circle in the Queen Maud gulf region, where over 90% of the world's Ross's Geese nest.

This map (click to enlarge) shows the banding location with a red marker: this is 1900 miles in a straight line from Dearborn. I've also indicated the location of Akimiski Island in James Bay, Nunavut. Although we do not see many Canada Geese with orange neck collars around here any longer, this is where nearly all of them were banded (more on the Dearborn-Akimiski connection here).

Ross's Geese have undergone a substantial population increase in the last few decades, and while once exceedingly rare in the Midwest and eastern U.S. during migration and winter, they have been showing up in these regions with increasing frequency. The increase in Arctic-breeding geese (especially Snow Geese) has profound impacts on sensitive habitats. "Our" Ross's Goose was banded by Ray Alisauskas, a scientist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, one of the key researchers working on the status of Ross's Goose and Snow Goose and their impacts on Arctic ecosystems. (Thus answering the obvious question of who would be in such a remote place banding geese!)

Most of the specific information on the winter or migratory distribution of Ross's Geese based on band recoveries is from hunters. Presumably, a report like ours, from a live bird, is quite rare.

While not the flashiest bird, this Ross's Goose surely had one of the most interesting stories of any bird we have encountered!

New for Dearborn: Ross's Goose

In the late afternoon of 24 March, Jim Fowler, Jr. found an adult Ross's Goose on private property, a first record for Dearborn. Several of us were able to see the bird and get some photos, and were hopeful the bird would be present in a more accessible area the next day. Searches all over the city turned up empty, however.

The goose was in the company of three Canada Geese, and was approximately the size of a Mallard, perhaps slightly larger. In Mike O'Leary's first photo, the bird is relaxed and shows the short-necked appearance of a Ross's Goose (it later got a little wary and raised its head a lot). The feathering between the bill and face was very straight, and the base of the bill had the characteristic blue-gray color and the some of the warty bumps of a Ross's Goose. (These warts are most pronounced on older males, least on females.)

Looking at the bird with binoculars, no grin patch was readily apparent; in the close-ups of Cathy Carroll's photos below, a thin dark line is present. This seems to be within the range of an "acceptable" Ross's Goose. The forehead didn't appear as "steep" as some Ross's Goose photos I have seen, but is also within the range for Ross's. It was obviously not a Snow Goose, but many of these geese have been judged to be hybrids.

We all appreciated (and enjoyed!) Cathy's belly-crawl up to the goose for a few closer photos.


The last two are the same photo; I increased the contrast of the second photo.

Those of us who saw this goose feel pretty comfortable calling it a Ross's Goose, and not a hybrid with a Snow Goose. According to the Birds of North America account for Ross's Goose, the percentage of hybrid Ross's x Lesser Snow Goose was 1.9% between 1989 and 1992 (n=2,943 Ross’ Geese captured) during banding operations in central Canadian Arctic. This was down from 4.7% for the period between 1962 and 1968 (n=29,880). It sure seems like many more birds are called hybrids than are likely to be actually present in the population. Perhaps this speaks to our lack of ability to truly distinguish the species of some intermediate-looking birds.

A final clue is available that may corroborate the identity of this goose. It had a band on its left leg. We have several photos that show most of the numbers, and I have a call into the Bird Banding Lab to the person in charge of looking up partial band numbers.

UPDATE: We have confirmed that this is indeed a Ross's Goose, banded in Nunavut on 7 August 2006, a male of unknown age.

This is the 257th species for Dearborn. There are fewer than 6 records of Ross's Goose for Wayne County.

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Thanks to Joe Hildreth for his comment below noting that a banded Ross's Goose was seen in Bowling Green, OH from 13-19 March. The pitch of the forehead, feathering near the bill, and bill structure look strikingly similar to the Dearborn bird. There is a link in the comment to a couple of photos.

More shade coffee birds and banding: part 2

In my last post I outlined the first portion of my recent trip to Nicaragua. Here is the next installment.

Part 2: Finca El Jaguar

In 2009, during our brief stopover in Managua, Nicaragua, my husband and I met Georges and Liliana Duriaux-Chavarría, the owners of El Jaguar, a fantastic cloud forest reserve and coffee farm near Jinotega in the north-central highlands of Nicaragua. We were immediately taken by both their charm and their dedication to bird conservation. There was no question we would visit them on our next trip to Nicaragua.

El Jaguar consists of about 240 acres, of which 80% is protected cloud forest reserve. This is beautiful old-growth forest with towering trees and thick multi-story growth.

Around 50 acres is coffee (in the foreground above, forest beyond). The coffee areas are broken up into plots separated or connected by forest or natural habitat patches. The coffee itself is grown among banana and other trees, but is not considered heavily shaded. This is because at an elevation of 4300 feet, the farm is covered by misty clouds part of nearly every day. The clouds provide the "shade" and the coffee would suffer from not enough light and a variety of fungal diseases if there were lots of trees planted with the coffee. So while El Jaguar does not qualify for Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certification, they are Rainforest Alliance certified.

Over 270 bird species have been recorded at El Jaguar (we saw about 80 in our few days there). More than 50 are Neotropical migrants (those that primarily breed in the U.S. and Canada and winter in the tropics). This includes an amazing 27 species of "our" warblers -- Golden-winged Warbler, the endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler, and the Cerulean Warbler among them. Due to this rich bird life, El Jaguar was designated as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International in 2006.

Two winter bird banding stations are run by Georges and Lili at El Jaguar, one in the primary forest, one in the coffee area. Since 2009, El Jaguar has also collaborated with the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group to do regional surveys for this declining North American-breeding warbler. A similar project, the International Wood Thrush Conservation Alliance, is now being launched to benefit the Wood Thrush, and El Jaguar participated in the first workshop.

Wood Thrushes are one of the most common North American-breeding migrants found wintering at El Jaguar. Here is one captured in the nets at the coffee banding station. As part of the working group project, a unique combination of color bands is put on each Wood Thrush so that individuals can be identified without having to recapture them.

This species has declined an estimated 50% over its broad breeding range since the late 1970s. It is evident to us, having traveled in the Neotropics, that Wood Thrushes require mature forests in the winter. The remarkable forests at El Jaguar by far had the most Wood Thrushes we've seen in our travels. The banding program at El Jaguar (and Finca Esperanza Verde) has shown that individual Wood Thrushes return to the same places each winter. Further studies with new technology indicate that there is strong connectivity between particular nesting regions and specific wintering regions. Since RRBO has a history of working with Wood Thrushes, we are anxious to get involved in this conservation effort seeking to understand the linkages with breeding and wintering areas, and factors important to their survival. (Your donations provide the support to help us in these initiatives!)

If all that work isn't enough, in 2010, Georges and Lili received a Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act grant, through the US Fish and Wildlife Service and matched by the American Bird Conservancy. This grant will assist El Jaguar in reforesting neighboring farms and help community coffee farmers work towards certifying their coffee with Rainforest Alliance. The photo above shows the native tree nursery that is part of this project. Within the next few years, El Jaguar will have raised and distributed over 20,000 trees!

Wilson's Warblers are also amazingly common there. We see them in most coffee farms we visit, and they are one of the few North American migrants that will actually feed in the coffee trees themselves.

Of course, we always like seeing the tropical resident birds. Georges and Lili are now starting a program where they will band throughout the year in order to gather the same type of important survivorship data on resident species.

As always, I like seeing the tropical cousins of the thrushes that I study here at RRBO. Here is an Orange-billed Nightingale-thrush (Catharus aurantiirostris) getting measured.

Quail-doves are notoriously hard to see. This White-faced Quail-dove (Geotrygon albifacies) was captured in the forest nets. Due to the efforts of Georges and Lili, and their son Jean-Yves, to educate the surrounding community, elusive forest birds that are typically scarce because they are hunted are much more common and relatively easy to see at El Jaguar. On the short trail behind our cabin, we saw Violaceous and White-faced Quail-doves (Geotrygon albifacies), and had drop-dead looks at a strolling Little Tinamou (Crypturellus soui) and Highland Guans (Penelopina nigra).

In fact, the guans actually come to feed with the chickens! So do a few Gray-necked Wood-rails (Aramides cajanea).

We didn't do as much hands-on banding at El Jaguar as at Finca Esperanza Verde. They use a different protocol at El Jaguar, and while I am familiar with all the extra measurements they take, the young Nicaraguans who help Georges and Lili could process birds way faster.

Hopefully, I came in handy interpreting the banding and conservation projects to this group that came for a visit.

In trying to make ourselves useful, we also spent time working on putting together a dragonfly list for the property.

We only brought one net, so Darrin did all the catch-and-release. I just posed with the net, but did a lot of ID work.

We were able to find and identify over a dozen species, including this very gorgeous Rhionaeschna jalapensis.

We also photographed and identified over two dozen butterfly species, many of which were new for the El Jaguar list.

We took perhaps eight photos of clearwinged butterflies, which turned out to represent seven different species and several families! This is Greta morgane oto.

We are still working on compiling our lists for Georges and Lili (and then could use a vacation from our vacation). It was a productive trip, and if anybody is interested in the logistics of travel to Nicaragua or El Jaguar, feel free to drop me a line. Here are a few links that may be of interest as well:

• The El Jaguar web site
• My more coffee-centric post at Coffee & Conservation, with more photos!
• An interview with Georges via Rainforest Alliance
• A review of El Jaguar coffee from a couple of years ago at Coffee & Conservation (the new crop will be available this spring at Whole Foods as part of one of their blends; I'll keep everyone posted)

Thank you Georges, Lili, and Jean-Yves!

More shade coffee birds and banding: part 1

Readers will recall that my husband Darrin O'Brien and I like to do "working" vacations, where we travel to Latin American countries to do bird banding, bird surveys, and/or insect survey work. Usually, this involves work on coffee farms, as coffee grown in a sustainable manner is critical to "our" migrant birds, and therefore a topic of great importance to me. Last year we went to west-central Mexico, and in 2009 it was Nicaragua. We returned this year to Nicaragua, taking part both in the same project as 2009, as well as visiting a new location. Here are some highlights of our recent trip. I'll do it in two parts.

Part 1: Finca Esperanza Verde

We started out, as we did in 2009, working with a North Carolina group doing some banding at the shade coffee farm, Finca Esperanza Verde (FEV). A recap of the 2009 trip is here, and more details on the coffee farm itself are here.

In 2009, there were five banders, including us. This year, we were two of three. During banding sessions, we were super-busy! I have a bum knee, so Darrin had the roughest set of nets to check. Nearly everything in coffee country is up or down, and we were at 1150 meters elevation. He often came back to the banding area out of breath. All the nets were in the coffee production area, which at FEV is under a lovely canopy of shade and interspersed with thick forest patches.

We were pretty excited to catch this male Red-capped Manakin (Pipra mentalis) on the first day. Aside from being very cool and crazy-looking, this is the species that "moonwalks" during its courtship display. The next day, we caught a female Long-tailed Manakin (Chiroxiphia linearis). Female manakins are generally dull green, but this family of birds are dependent on forest where they seek out a variety of fruit to eat. Catching them at FEV was evidence of the quality of the forest there.

On the third day, we caught a male Long-tailed Manakin. He was a real crowd-pleaser!

Another blue-colored bird we caught was Blue-black Grosbeak (Cyanocompsa cyanoides). They are a little smaller than our Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and, frankly, didn't seem to bite as much.

One thing we did was take photos of the spread wings of most of the tropical resident birds we processed. Our knowledge of molt strategies and ageing of these birds is limited, and the Institute of Bird Populations is requesting such photos.

This is the wing of an Olivaceous Woodcreeper (Sittasomus griseicapillus), a member of a large family of birds that behave similar to woodpeckers or our Brown Creeper.

And here's the wing of the unrelated Plain Xenops (Xenops minutus). Xenops are also bark-foraging birds that will cling to tree trunks or branches, extracting insects with their wedge-shaped bills. I think the similarity in the wing coloration between these two unrelated birds is quite interesting.

Speaking of cool bills, here is a Stub-tailed Spadebill (Platyrinchus cancrominus)a tiny flycatcher will a nifty, wide, flat bill.

Here's another resident flycatcher with an interesting bill -- a Northern Bentbill (Oncostoma cinereigulare). This was one of several we banded, and two were recaptures from 2008!

Of course, many American migrants rely on shade coffee farms in Latin America, and our interest in this issue is how we got involved in these visits in the first place. The most common North American-breeding migrants at FEV are Wilson's Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, and Wood Thrush.

Here's another: Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla). This waterthrush was a recapture, and had first been banded at FEV in 2006. That's at least five round trips between the U.S. and Central America. It had also been recaptured a year or so ago, underscoring the winter site fidelity of many migrants, and how important it is that their habitat remains intact during all parts of their life cycles.

There wasn't a lot of time for relaxation, but we were grateful to the FEV workers for bringing down a couple of chairs to the little spot where we had the banding area set up.

I think we banded around 60 birds in our three morning sessions. We caught fewer hummingbirds than we did in 2009, I think because the flowering phenology was different due to the very wet La Niña conditions this winter. More Guilford College students were on this trip, and everyone got a chance to learn about bird banding and participate in the process. Our thanks to John Gerwin of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Lynn Moseley of Guilford College and her students, and Dave Davenport of EcoQuest Travel for not only allowing us to come along, but putting up with all of our niff-naw as well.

After five days, it was time to say goodbye to FEV and the Guilford group, and head to north of Jinotega for our stay at another coffee farm, El Jaguar. It will be the subject of my next post.

Winter Bird Population Survey 2010-2011

The 19th year of RRBO's Winter Bird Population Survey has been completed. Over the 20 December to 20 February survey period, 44 species were tallied. The previous annual average number of species is 38. There was a new species for the count this year, Tundra Swan, bringing the cumulative total over the years to 70 species. This is only the second year in which we have recorded Red-shouldered Hawk. Although only seen during one survey, the bird was observed several times throughout the period. A small number of Common Redpolls were recorded on three occasions late in the count period. One species that has been showing a dramatic trend is American Crow. The average number of crows counted per year from 1993-2002 was 139. Then West Nile Virus (WNV) entered our region and greatly reduced their numbers. In Dearborn and much of Wayne County, their numbers have not recovered. The average number of crows counted per year since then has been just 9. That number represents the cumulative number of crows counted over an average of 13 surveys days per year. Over the past decade, crows are often not seen on any given survey day, and the average number of crows per visit has been under 1.0 since 2004. This year it was 1.5, mostly owing to a flock that flew over campus on 1 January, the day of the Christmas Bird Count. Thus, that modest increase probably does not really represent a solid gain in numbers. The graph below tells the sad story. Another species that people were concerned was impacted by WNV was the Black-capped Chickadee. I last reviewed their status in 2002 and 2003. Our data showed a long-term decline that preceded WNV in our area, but this decline seemed to become more pronounced and numbers stayed depressed after WNV became established here. One interesting aspect of chickadee ecology is that every so often, very large numbers of young birds come south in the fall after a year of high productivity in the north. This phenomena occurred in fall 2010. It was much more pronounced east of here, even as closely as across the Detroit River in Canada. At Ontario's Long Point Bird Observatory along the north shore of Lake Erie, the number of chickadees banded over a few days in November exceeded any annual totals for the past 50 years! The ended up banding nearly 2000 chickadees, almost 25% of their 50-year total. Numbers here were nowhere near as remarkable, but they were noticeable here on campus during fall banding and evident in our winter survey numbers. The cumulative total of 355 chickadees during the survey period was the highest since RRBO counted 417 in 1995-1996, and the second highest total ever. The average number of chickadees per visit was the highest since 1998. Here's the graph: For resident species like crows and chickadees, this type of long-term data set in invaluable in seeing how birds react to various environmental changes, including diseases like WNV. It's critical to have monitoring programs like this in place, ready to provide "before" data when some unanticipated natural event occurs. Next year, after our 20th annual survey, I will be doing some more serious analyses on our data set, with an eye towards publication. Now, on to spring surveys...

Dearborn portion of the Detroit River CBC, 2011

The Detroit River Michigan-Ontario Christmas Bird Count was held, as it is each year, on January 1. This was the 34th year for the count, which is centered at I-94 and Warren Ave, and the 17th year that RRBO has coordinated the field work in the city of Dearborn. Our expectations were kind of modest. Temperatures had been mostly below freezing much of December, until a few days before the count. A lot of the Rouge River was frozen, and much of the Detroit River was also frozen, or flowing slush ice. This resulted in most gulls and waterfowl moving out of Dearborn. New Year's Eve was warm and it rained much of the night, continuing periodically in the morning on count day, followed by wind and falling temperatures. The number of hours in the field was diminished by both these conditions and the fact that both Michigan State and U of M were in bowl games, causing some early attrition among observers. In spite of this, 45 species were found in Dearborn, only slightly off the average of 47. For the first year, Ring-billed Gulls were missed in the city. However, we had high counts for Red-breasted Nuthatch (10) and White-breasted Nuthatch (36). Ember the Peregrine was found by my husband and I on one of her usual perches at Fairlane Plaza in the morning, and I later saw her on top of Ford World Headquarters. Our territory includes counting the bird in the various plantings on Ford properties. For some years, they were all sunflowers and attracted many thousands of birds. The last couple of years only one field has been entirely sunflowers, some have been wildflowers (but mowed in fall) and others were cropped in timothy hay and once harvested left barren. This year the wildflowers weren't mowed and the hay fields had sunflowers around the borders, although the cover crop was of no interest to birds. The best field was the sunflowers around the world headquarters: That's the headquarters building in the background between the trees. Although blackbirds has really worked these sunflowers over in the fall, there were still seeds in the centers of the heads. Over 100 Red-winged Blackbirds and a couple of Brown-headed Cowbirds were present, along with hoards of finches and other seed-eaters. It takes a few hours to get accurate counts on the thousands of birds moving in and out of the crop and a brushy line of trees in the middle. We also usually walk the concrete channel of the Rouge River. My husband Darrin O'Brien covered it this year. Here is another shot of the Ford headquarters, this time from a mile or so away along the channel: Snow Woods is another Ford property we cover. Here I am, dwarfed by a big tangle of grape, creeper, and Japanese honeysuckle vines. Although it looked perfect hideaway, there was no Northern Saw-whet Owl in residence. Probably one of the most interesting things on our count is the high number of wintering Black-crowned Night-herons. Around 2004, a winter roost was discovered inside the sprawling, mega-industrial Ford River Rouge complex, which is surveyed with special permission. The herons, which are not happy-looking birds in any circumstance, gather in what appears to be glum silence in thick Phagmites rimming a pretty nasty-looking small pond. It's near one of the blast furnace buildings, so maybe it stays open because it's receiving warm water somehow. Since 2004, the average number of night-herons here has been 24, and there were 25 this year. I'm sure a bunch are not counted that are hidden in the reeds. It's a very weird, post-apocolyptic-flavored experience seeing them there. I'm not sure what they find to eat. The boat slip and turning basin that you can see to the right of the "heron pond" in the photo below are deep, made to accommodate freighters. The channelized portion of the river leading into the basin is vee-shaped, so it freezes along the margins. Whatever they find, it is highly likely to be contaminated. It's just a weird situation! Finally,we had a new generation participating in the count. Greg Norwood did his first Dearborn CBC in 1997, when he was still a few years away from getting his driver's license. This year, he brought along his daughter Ruth, and his wife Terry documented the occasion. Althought this makes me feel really old, it's great to be part of a family tradition!